


Like Poison

by championofnone



Series: The Shepard Chronicles [3]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Shepard (Mass Effect) has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Survivor Guilt, and refuses to deal with it, anger issues, shep has that in spades
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 13:20:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13741767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/championofnone/pseuds/championofnone
Summary: Carrine Shepard has always had a temper. It's just not often that it gets the better of her.Her self-control deteriorates the longer this war goes on, and she can't take much more of it.





	Like Poison

**Author's Note:**

> My Shepard has never, ever really gotten along with Liara. ME2 does that relationship no favors.

The crew knew from the get-go that Shepard had a temper. It was more or less an open secret, and it was something she kept well under control, her guard absolute and unwavering. 

Then they helped Tabitha. Shepard calmed the girl down, C-Sec watching anxiously, and never once did the expression on Shepard’s face flicker. For the first time, they were seeing her speak to someone with utmost patience, so softly and kindly that she was hard to recognize as the woman who brandished an assault rifle and charged at a krogan just yesterday. 

Her crew realized they were seeing Carrine for the first time.

No one said anything after she’d talked to C-Sec and requested they have Tabitha contact her on her road to recovery. She’d been there. She understood in a way they couldn’t.

They weren’t surprised that her face went rigid once they were in the airlock. They brought nothing up when she didn’t say a word, expression a perfect picture of stoicism.

Kaidan jumped a bit when a thud sounded from her room, and he turned from the panel he was working on to see a dent in the wall. Ashley shared an alarmed look with him. 

“I’m not dealing that with,” she said quickly, trying to talk around her share of dinner rations. He gave her a flat look in return. “Uh-uh. No way. I’m not getting my head ripped off. She won’t hurt you at least.”

“Thanks, Ash, really,” he said dryly. He logged off of the console quickly before going to knock on Shepard’s cabin door. “Um. Commander?” He heard a muffled sound from inside and looked at Ashley again. She shrugged at him, taking a large bite of what looked like potatoes to spare her from talking. “Are you alright?” 

The door let out a soft whoosh as it opened, Shepard’s eyes hard but her expression neutral. “I’m fine,” she replied, “I just need some ice.”

Neither of them moved. Kaidan was hoping she would elaborate, but Shepard clearly wasn’t in the mood to talk. They both jumped when Ashley snorted, laughing at them from the dining table. 

“Can it, Chief,” Shepard barked, more embarrassed than actually admonishing. Ashley gave her a half-hearted salute in return. 

Kaidan took a moment to glance into the room to see the damage There was a dent just larger than Shepard’s fist right into the metal.

“Let’s not get Shepard that pissed off at us,” he said quietly once Shepard was safely in the medbay with Chakwas. Ashley nodded in agreement.

                                                         * * 

Shepard feels like she’s been angry since she was 13, but this cold, unrelenting, unforgiving fury she feels at 31 is something else entirely. She woke up surrounded by Cerberus worker bees, has been lied to more times than she can count, had a biotic amp forcibly implanted without her consent, and her pacing is about to wear a rut into the floor of the CIC. Kelly watches her patiently, and it just irritates Shepard more.

She wishes there was a faster way to get to Horizon as Mordin jabbers away at some poor, unsuspecting crewman too afraid to decline the conversation. She doesn’t care. She absolutely hates the Illusive Man for manipulating her into the position she’s in, for escalating her anxiety.

“I have it on good authority that Kaidan Alenko will be there,” he’d said. She could almost smell the acrid cigarette smoke as he talked at her, and the arrogance that rolled off him made her hate him more.

There was nothing she wouldn’t do to make sure Kaidan stayed alive, and dammit, he knew that. Bastard.

Her anxiety wound her up like a clock once they’d touched down, Mordin’s absent-minded murmurings about their protective measures going completely unnoticed. Garrus knew her well enough to not bother talking to her in her anxiety-induced focus. 

All she could think about were what ifs. What if they got there too late? What if Kaidan was already frozen like the other colonists they’d seen? What if whatever froze them would kill them if they weren’t taken?

They rounded a corner, and Shepard saw a Collector gathering up a dark-haired man, and she didn’t think twice before reacting. Her biotics were nothing to write home about, wild and uncontrollable as they were. She could barely move an empty crate down in the cargo hold, and practice just ended in screaming matches between Miranda and herself.

But with the thought that the Collector might be reaching for Kaidan ignited something, and she opened up with a fully-powered biotic charge, her fist slamming straight into the Collector as they both went down. The flare she unleashed threw its weapon - and the Collector next to it that she hadn’t yet noticed - flying away from them. There was nothing left its head as she stood and moved to check on the colonist.

It wasn’t Kaidan. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or even more terrified than she already was. She knew the Collectors being here was a trap for her because she didn’t believe the Illusive Man for a moment, and if he got hurt because of her…

Shepard flinched as Garrus’s hand lightly touched her shoulder. “C’mon,” he said, trying to sound hopeful, “we’ve still got a chance to find him.”

They moved through the colony, and she was exhausted with a pounding headache after taking down some disgusting blob of a creature the Collectors brought with them. That second flare had taken most of her energy, and she’d be happy to take a nap on one of the nearby crate trucks. 

The man they’d rescued was bitching up a storm, understandably upset at the loss of most of the colony, and she hardly paid attention to him.

“Declan, for once, be quiet,” said the voice she was terrified she’d never hear again, and there was an instant release of tension in her shoulders as she turned to face him. “You’re in the presence of a legend.” He paused as they faced each other, “And a ghost.”

“Kaidan,” she breathed. She knew any hope of appearing unaffected was out the window, and she collapsed into his hug without hesitation. “ _Kaidan_.”

“Carrine,” he replied, equally emotional, his fingers in a death grip on the mesh parts of her armor. He remembered where they were, after all this time. They separated by inches, almost not wanting to speak. The things they needed to say had no happy outcomes. “What happened?”

She explained everything, without hesitation. She could feel his unhappiness and disbelief, and she couldn’t blame him; she barely believed it herself. Suddenly being biotic? Eezo exposure. While rare to manifest in adults, it happened. Weird scars? Enough damage that she needed skin grafts. Coming back from the dead? Really hard to get, but it’s been done, and if anyone could do it after being spaced, it’d be Shepard. 

Working with Cerberus? His hands dropped from her arms as he took a step back, and she could feel the line be drawn like it was a physical thing, and her heart ached with anger and pain both. 

“Cerberus, Shepard?” he spat. She locked herself up. If she was Shepard to him, things were looking bad. “After everything? After Toombs, after Kahoku, after Akuze? What the hell?”

“What part if ‘I didn’t choose this’ did I not make clear, Kaidan?” she sighed. Her headache was getting worse, the pounding at the base of her skull beginning to travel to her temples. “I have no idea how Cerberus got my body. I don’t know how I’m standing here today. If I had a way, I’d just steal the fucking ship and fuck off into the Traverse or something. But it doesn’t work like that.”

His jaw twitched, his only tell that he was well and truly upset. She hated herself with everything she had for causing that, but there was nothing she could do. “Shepard…”

“Nothing I say will convince you, I know,” she said slowly, trying to choose her words carefully. “I’d ask you to come with me to see what I mean, but I don’t want you anywhere near Cerberus if I can help it.” He watched her carefully, and the wave of relief she felt when he relaxed ever so slightly was immense. He knows she’d want him there if it was something she believed in, and this was the clearest stay away she could give him with Cerberus listening to her every word through the comm line. 

Kaidan looked pained, like what he was about to say was as bad as setting a bone. “I loved you, you know. I don’t think I got to tell you that before - before -”

Shepard exhaled harshly. “I know.” She can’t say it with an audience, and she refuses to give Cerberus that kind of leverage to use against her. But he studies her face, and accepts whatever he sees there. 

“Goodbye, Shepard,” he says. “I hope I see you again when things are better.” 

He leaves, and it takes considerable willpower for her to take her hurt and channel it into anger. “Commander?” Garrus asks tentatively behind her.

She taps her comm, waits for Joker to pick up. “Get me the fuck off this goddamn planet.”

                                                        * *

Count to five and hold. Breathe out. Count to five and hold. Breathe out.

Yeah, that trick wasn’t going to work.

Her vision had nearly whited out in rage at Liara’s admission, and at least the asari had the decency to look ashamed of herself as Shepard stormed up to the table in between them.

“You brought my body to  _them_?” she snarled. “To Cerberus, fucking  _Cerberus_?”

“What else was I supposed to do, Shepard?” Liara replied, sounding on the verge of tears. Shepard didn’t care. “They said they could bring you back. It was either them or the Shadow Broker.”

“I’d have rather stayed dead, T’Soni.” Her grip on the desk was dangerous, and she could hear the metal giving under it. “You don’t seem to understand the fact that they killed my entire squad and would have killed me, too, had I not found a fucking rocket launcher. They have tortured dozens, if not hundreds, if not  _thousands_ , of innocents, and they’ve turned humans into beasts for the sake of seeing what would happen. And you willingly gave me to them.”

“What do you want me to say, Shepard, that I’m sorry?” Liara said, gathering her resolve. “Because I’m not.”

The glass to the right of Liara fractured as the table flew into it, Shepard’s biotic flare dangerous and alive. Liara looked at her, fear etched into her face as Shepard stalked towards her. “Apologizing would be a start,” she growled, feeling an anger more animal than human, “but you can’t undo what you’ve done. I’m here, and now you have to deal with me. I’ll work with you because I need your information. I won’t hurt you because once I would have called you a friend.”

She stepped back, taking a deep breath to try and wrangle her biotics and her temper back under control. She could see Liara fighting not to tremble against the cracked glass. “But I can never forgive you. Not for this. Not for any of this.”

                                                         * *

James Vega would like to say he knew about fighting in synergy. Him and his rifle against the world, they could take on anything.

That was before he fought with two Alliance legends. Major Alenko and Commander Shepard didn’t even have to speak to each other to know where they were needed, and with their frustrations being tossed around while approaching the Mars base, he knew they had some issues to work out.

So to fight like that while still obviously angry at each other? That was fighting in synergy. He almost wanted to cry, it was so beautiful, like something that belonged in a museum. 

Then he crashed a car into a runaway robot. And the robot went after Alenko, and he witnessed all of Shepard’s considerable power and incredible focus shift to one singular being in the universe, and he absolutely knew he never wanted to be on the receiving end of that. Like, ever. 

She emptied a full clip into the robot’s head, and probably would have spat on it had she not been preoccupied with reaching Alenko as quickly as possible, pulling him across her shoulders and barking at him to retrieve the body.

He and EDI poured over the bot’s body back in the medbay. Well, he wanted to do something useful, so he followed EDI’s instructions to remove some panel or another. He felt useless as Liara tried talking at Shepard, but the Commander was unresponsive until EDI announced that Hackett was on the line for her. She marched out of the room without a glance at anyone else in it. Liara sighed, rubbing her forehead in frustration.

“Is she always like that?” James asked her. 

“I’d like to say no, but…,” her voice trailed off, looking thoughtful but exhausted. “We’ve had some differences over the years. I’m surprised she trusts me enough to let me watch over Kaidan at this point.”

“Wow, some fight you musta been in,” he whistled. “She never seemed that angry when she was in the brig.”

Liara sighed. “Shepard’s always angry. Don’t forget that. She just has remarkable self-control.” 

“So this -” he gestured to the bot “- was her losing her temper?” The thing’s mangled head spoke for itself, awash in the white light of a scanner controlled by EDI. 

“No,” she replied, and James almost felt a shiver down his spine, “not even close.”

                                                          * *

The general consensus was, brutes were absolutely awful. They were the second worst thing the Reapers had created next to banshees. They’d taken a krogan charge and made it even more deadly. 

The planet they were on had a lab overrun with the things, and it brought a bunch of husk friends on the field trip. James swore as he lobbed another grenade at a cluster of them, their moans rattling something deep within him. “Dios mio,” he mumbled before calling into the open comm, “are we almost done?”

“Keep up the cover fire,” Shepard ordered. EDI was along to repair the primary lab systems, with Shepard leading the ground team of James and Kaidan. They needed to be quick, because the system was swarming with Reapers, and she wanted the Normandy out of the area within the hour. “EDI, how’re we doing?” 

“Reset is at 98.7 percent completion, Shepard,” she replied. “It is nearly finished.”

“Give it a motivational speech or something, the clock’s ticking fast out here.”

Kaidan choked on a laugh when EDI did exactly that, telling the console she was at that it had very good processors and she’d set up a new protection system for it if it went just a little faster. James didn’t hold back on his laughter, turning to joke at EDI - 

\- and the console covering Kaidan was ripped away by a brute James hadn’t noticed, one armored claw slamming into the biotic and sending him crashing into the wall. 

Shepard’s world slowed to a crawl as the brute roared, claw beginning to come down, and she knew there was no way Kaidan could get his barrier up in time to deflect that. She dropped her rifle and poured all of her energy into a charge and opened her biotics to take the full impact of the hit.

Her hands braced and she heard a shoulder pop out of a socket as the impact pushed her backward, her feet leaving indents in the concrete floor from the brute’s weight. It roared at her again, and she roared right back, her biotics flaring into a bright corona. 

No one and nothing was touching him ever again, not while she still took breath, not while blood pumped through her veins. Never.

When her vision cleared, the brute was down, a good portion of its torso overtaken by a hole and several bullet wounds. She struggled to breathe, feeling immense pressure at the back of her head.

James swore. “Holy shit, are you alright, Commander?” 

She didn’t respond, choosing instead to focus on the gentle hands that were on her neck and forcing her head to rest on a shoulder. “Breathe, or you’re going to pass out.” She took Kaidan’s advice as he gently massaged the area around her amp, taking some of the pressure with it. A ragged breath filled her lungs, but she couldn’t breathe evenly for several minutes. She faintly heard Kaidan giving orders to James and EDI, but she couldn’t focus clearly.

A few moments later, she felt well enough to speak. “What did I do?”

“You stopped a brute with your bare hands, Carrine,” his replied, his voice calm but clipped. She wasn’t sure if he was mad at her or frustrated that she’d endangered herself again.

If she was being honest, it was probably both. 

“I mean,” she paused to take another breath, “what did I do to my amp?”

“You nearly overloaded it. A corona like that takes a lot of power to produce, and you don’t know how to control it when they happen.” 

Shepard swallowed, allowing her eyes to close for a moment. “I couldn’t let it hurt you, Kaidan.” 

She felt lips against the crown of her head. “I know.”

                                                        * *

Some of her crew kept telling her that Thessia wasn’t her fault, that it was too far gone by the time the Normandy arrived in the system.

Shepard knew it was bullshit. It was her goddamn job to anticipate situations like Thessia, and she failed. Mission failure reports weren’t something she had to write often; she knew herself and her crew well enough to have one of the best success rates in the Alliance, and her mission had no forgiveness for failure. Failure meant countless lives lost, homes destined to become ash and rubble, and worlds torn asunder. 

She’d already broken up a fight between Liara and Javik, and her crew seemed to read her temper like the ticking time bomb that it was. She gets it, she really does. Watching your homeworld burn is horrible, it scars you for life. You’re not really the same you were before after witnessing that.

No one knew how to talk to Liara after that. Their homeworlds were still being fought for, or they’d just gotten them back. Shepard bit her tongue to keep her from saying neither Palavan nor Earth had fallen - people were still fighting there, just like they were on Thessia. 

So talking to Liara was yet another thing added to Shepard’s already overflowing plate, and the small amount of patience she had to spare was quickly wearing thin.

“My people are dying, Shepard,” Liara snapped, tear tracks marking her cheeks. “I grew up there, of course I’m not going to be okay!”

“Once again, twisting my words,” Shepard returned. “I’m not expecting that. I’m saying you need to take this and do something with it.” This conversation wasn’t going anywhere good. She opened the door to leave and took a few steps into the hallway before Liara grabbed her arm.

“Earth hasn’t fallen! You don’t know what it’s like to see your world burn under Reaper fire!” Liara’s eyes widened, realizing she’d made a mistake as soon as the words left her mouth. 

“You’re right, I don’t.” The dimmer lighting of the hall added to her glower, and Shepard’s gaze was piercing and calculating; Liara had only been on the receiving end of it before when Shepard found out who gave her to Cerberus. “But I watched my mother be dragged out my front door by her hair, a batarian fist wrapped around it. I heard my father choking on his own blood after he was shot for trying to help her. I had someone’s head thrown at me so the batarians that wiped out Mindoir could break me by making me think my brother was dead, that my mother was dead or worse. I watched as a thresher maw planted by Cerberus destroyed my squad, as the acid spray landed on my captain and ate through her suit and skin. I walked the Collector base, and I saw exactly what they did to the people they captured. Did you know they liquified people, T’Soni? They’re awake, they’re confused, and then they die screaming.” 

Shepard vaguely heard Chakwas leave for the quiet of the medbay. She couldn’t blame the doctor. It wasn’t something people wanted to relive.

“You are not the only person who has suffered loss on this ship,” Shepard said, no longer caring how detached she sounded. “So you best stop expecting special treatment for it when all of our homeworlds are burning, when all of us have lost things and people dear to us.”

Liara’s hand was still a vice around her wrist, and a sharp glance was enough for Liara to release her. “I - I didn’t mean -”

“I know you didn’t. But no one on this ship gets special treatment. Grieve in whatever way you need -” she gestured vaguely to the ship and the crew who were definitely not listening to the argument “- hell, you could talk to literally anyone here about it. But shutting down and pretending it didn’t happen? That you’re the only one going through hell? That is not acceptable on my ship, and that is not the case for anyone here.” 

Shepard turned on her heel and stalked toward the elevator, not stopping until she was in her cabin. Kaidan glanced over his shoulder at her from the desk, and was immediately beside her. “Hey, hey, what’s going on?”

“Nothing,” she replied flatly. She needed to bottle this shit up, lock it away somewhere deep inside her where it would fester and burn like poison. She can’t break. This war can’t be won if she breaks. 

She flinches as his hands frame her jaw, thumbs gently moving across her cheeks. He doesn’t say a word, just keeps his breathing level until hers syncs up and her heart rate slows down. “Carr, what happened?” he asks again, much gently than before. 

“I argued with T’Soni,” she admitted. “EDI can play it back for you if you want to hear it. Or ask anyone that was on the crew deck.”

Kaidan hummed, thumbs now massaging her temples. She felt the tension that she didn’t know she was carrying melt away. “Must’ve been a bad one if you’re using T’Soni instead of Liara.”

Shepard stepped forward, resting her head on his shoulder as his arms wrapped around her back. “I really don’t want to talk about it right now, Kaidan.” 

“Okay,” he sighed. “Okay.” She allowed him to guide her down to what had become their bed instead of just hers. Her boots were stripped off, and she heard his hit the floor just before he wrapped himself around her. 

The room was quiet for a few minutes, the sound of the fish tank’s filtration system the only thing breaking the silence. The silence felt deafening. “I failed them,” she breathed, certain she was too quiet for Kaidan to hear her. 

She knew he’d heard when his arms tightened around her. “You didn’t, Carrine. You did more than anyone else has.”

“Millions of people are dead, Kaidan.” She pushed at him, suddenly, desperately needing some distance, disgusted with herself. He let her go, but she could feel his eyes on her like a physical thing. “They’re dead because of  _me_ , because I wasn’t fast enough, because I let Kai Leng get away, because I didn’t try harder to get the Council to believe me. This is on me, and no one else.”

“No, it’s not.” His voice was firm as he sat up next to her, careful not to touch her. “They didn’t want to listen in the first place, and now their people have to pay the price, and that’s on them, not you. You can’t stop the Reapers alone, Carr, no matter how much you want to.” He slowly reached up to move some her hair out of her face before continuing. “I know you blame yourself, but I want you to know that I don’t.”

“Kaidan…,” she didn’t want her voice to shake, but she couldn’t control it. She didn’t want to break, but he’s always been good at seeing through Shepard to the broken pieces that make up Carrine. 

“After…after you died,” she leaned into him as he continued, “I blamed myself for ages. What could I have done differently? I hated myself for not grabbing you and forcing you to leave Joker behind, the stubborn ass that he was being. I hated that I’d been too afraid to tell you that I love you, that you gave me inspiration to be a better person, someone you would be proud to walk beside. I didn’t care if it was into battle, into a court-martial, hell, even a damn grocery stall.”

He nudged her, and she straightened up enough to look him in the eye. “I need you as much as you need me, okay? I meant it when I said I can’t lose you again.” Shepard moved to speak, but the look he gave her meant he wasn’t finished. “When you died, I was a mess. Ask Anderson. Ask Ian. Ask the five grief counselors I cycled through. The years afterward, I felt like a shell. I could function, sure, used the whole fake it ‘till you make it strategy, but it was hollow. The guilt nearly killed me, Carr. Then you walked back into my life, and everything was tossed back to square one, we’ve made it to now, and I’m not letting you go again. It’s okay to feel guilt, Carrine, but this was not your fault, and I’m not going to let you handle this alone.”

She leaned back into him as his hand wrote patterns on her back “I’m a hypocrite.”

“A little, but so are most people.”

“I told Liara no one on this ship got special treatment, yet look at us.” 

“Carrine, no one on this ship is going to begrudge you anything that will help you win this war. If you choose to lean on me, if I can support you at all and take some of the world off of your shoulders, I’ll be honored to do it. But I do it because I love you, and I don’t want to see you killing yourself in this war.”

Shepard turned into him fully, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face against his shoulder once again. He returned the embrace, pulling her tighter against him as his back hit the bed. The guilt was still there, the sense of failure had buckled itself in as a gut feeling by now, but the anger wasn’t quite so cold, so hard. 

She wishes she didn’t have to be Shepard, the one that survived the nightmares that she’s seen, that carried the weight of the galaxy’s survival on her shoulders, but it was fleeting. She won’t give up her sense of responsibility, but at least Kaidan’s stubborn enough to not let her deal with it alone.

That’s good enough for her.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a long time since I've written anything, and let alone uploaded. Life's honestly been mostly shit between cancer in the family and money being tighter than ever, but whatever. 
> 
> Let me know what you guys think, I'm super rusty with my writing.


End file.
